Search results for ""Author Marcia Hatfield Daudistel""

In Grace & Gumption: The Women of El Paso, thirteen contributors trace the history of El Paso from the distaff side. The women who settled El Paso faced an unusual reality. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo changed the border, and people who were previously citizens of Mexico - living in their native country, speaking their native language - were suddenly citizens of the United States, forced to speak a foreign language. Editor Marcia Hatfield Daudistel gathers together authoritative voices who examine the bicultural identity of this city through the various roles the women assumed: artist and muse, philanthropist, healer, writer, historian, nun, suffragette, and businesswoman. The result is a new look at this city nestled between rivers, mountains, a military base, and Mexico. The women in this volume are just a few who left a legacy in El Paso. Their stories are kept alive through the memories of their families, the oral history of the Comadres, and in the history books. Their accomplishments were hard-won and required courage, persistence, inspiration, and especially grace and gumption. Contributors include Adair Margo, Mimi R. Gladstein, Yolanda Leyva, Nancy Miller Hamilton, Irasema Coronado, Lois Marchino, Deane Mansfield-Kelley, Meredith Abarca, Susan Goodman Novick, Lucy Fischer-West, Brenda Risch, Evelyn Posey, and Daudistel.

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Once there was a place called Smeltertown, and it was known as the largest industrial city on the banks of the Rio Grande. The smokestacks of the American Smelting and Refining Company, which polluted the air for three miles in every direction, grew so tall over the decades that they became a landmark just inside the El Paso side of the US-Mexico border. In a community of small adobe houses, many with dirt floors and without indoor plumbing, both the men employed at the smelter and the women who raised families and made homes there form the history of Smeltertown.Through interviews with the women and their now middle-aged children, the realities of everyday life in Smeltertown are revealed—as is the strength of the women who forged a community and preserved a culture in these primitive conditions. Current photographs of the interviewees and historical photographs of Smeltertown illustrate the history of an area not even native El Pasoans knew.

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